Win-Loss Analysis - Revisited

 

In the last few weeks, I have spoken to at least three ex-colleagues who wanted some insights into the win-loss analysis work I have done in the past for clients.  They were all looking to significantly enhance the win-loss analysis program within their product marketing organizations.  Here is the summary of thoughts I shared with them.

1. Win-loss and competitive analysis are two sides of the same coin.  The programs feed into each other to help you give your sales reps the information edge they need to compete and win.
2. Win-loss analysis contains two components – qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, and you need both. 
• Analysis from your CRM system can give you good quantitative insights into your sales performance against major competitors in the last quarter(s) by segment and region, why you win and lose against them, as well as quarter over quarter trends.  Of course, the quality of analysis depends on the quality of data being entered by your sales reps in the CRM system.  Your Sales Ops should help you continuously improve the quality of data within the CRM system.
• If there was an RFP associated with that opportunity, gets your hands on the RFP response. Also get your hands on the proposal submitted by your sales rep, as well as any notes about the opportunity within the CRM system.
• You need to complement the quantitative analysis and RFP/CRM notes with interviews – with your sales reps, pre-sales engineers, partners, and your customers (both won and lost) to get a 360-degree perspective about that opportunity.  The more interviews you can do, the richer your understanding will be about why you won or lost that deal. Key is to keep those interviews open ended (except for a few scripted questions at the beginning to validate the information within the CRM system).  This will give you deeper insights into what were the triggers that led to the customer looking for a new solution, what was the perception of your company before the sales cycle started, how it changed over the course of the sales cycle, what was done well in the sales cycle, what could be done better and why did they choose your solution over your competition (or vice-versa if you lost the deal).  You will be surprised with what you can learn from these interviews, including what marketing messages are working and what are not.

Key is to get to this information quickly – do not wait till the end of the quarter to start the interview process.  Within a week of winning or losing a deal, you should be scheduling calls with your sales, pre-sales, partner, and customer to get the whole picture.  Sometimes it helps to get an independent consultant to do this for you - they can look at the data more objectively and there is more open sharing of information during the interviews - both internal and external.

I had written multiple blog posts on this topic last summer.  Here is the link to the first post in the series.

Please share your win-loss program war stories  - especially what worked well and what changes you need to make to get the program back on track (where you were not happy with initial results), so other readers can learn from them.